Sexual Fulfillment in Chopin's Awakening Essays

Sexual Fulfillment in Chopin's Awakening Essays

Essay Preview

Society keeps order, allows for advancement, and gives humanity a good face. It also imposes morals, roles, and limits a person's potential development. If someone wishes to reach beyond what society expects of them, they must cast aside social restrictions. Edna Pontellier, in Kate Chopin's The Awakening, feels the urge to cast off the veil society burdens her with and live as she chooses to. The driving factor behind her desire to awaken is her lack of sexual fulfillment. She lives her life following conduct becoming of a woman who marries into the Creole elite of New Orleans. While her husband, Léonce, adores her, she does not truly love him and their relationship appears platonic. Robert, a young paramour, woos Edna and she finds herself with wants and desires. Edna later experiments with a known womanizer named Alceé, and uncovers more passions. While Edna fails to fully come into her own in society, she awakens her sexuality through her experiences with the aforementioned men.

Léonce appears to be an ideal husband for the turn of the nineteenth century. He adores his wife Edna, buys her affectionate gifts, and cares for her general well being. When other women see his treatment of Edna, they believe him to be a perfect husband. Edna, however, sees him as being distant and reserved. Though he gives her material freedom, he sees her as a possession. He provides little emotional support and cannot fill any of Edna's rising sexual needs. "Her husband seemed to her now like a person whom she had married without love as an excuse" (77). Léonce proves to be the father figure for Edna. He pampers her and takes care of all her physical needs. However, he is unable to rea...

... middle of paper ...

...ng in their relationship, but cannot deny something that her newly awakened sexuality craves. It is her way of rebelling against society and fulfilling many suppressed wants and desires. It leaves her empty, however, as this passion did not come from love.

Affairs and liaisons are not necessary parts of life, but for Edna Pontellier they help awaken her true sexual desires, passions, and needs. Her husband provides the needed cover for society and helps her to realize what she is lacking in life. Robert supplies the love, the passion, and the fairy tale romance. He shows her what love is and elicits her childish infatuation. Alcée brings out Edna's id, her want for sex. He allows her to show her animalism that craves sexual attention. Through her experiences with these three men, Edna fully awakens her sexuality.

Need Writing Help?

- Relationship between Chopin's Life and The Awakening Katherine O'Flahtery Chopin was born in St. Louis, Missouri February 8,1851. She was the daughter of Thomas and Eliza O'Flaherty, a prominent Irish-born merchant and his wife. Together, Chopin's parents represented freedom and the American dream. Their ambition and spirit helped mold Chopin into a unique character with independence and intelligence. Her father died suddenly when Chopin was four years old. His death was the result of a terrible accident that took the lives of several civic leaders when the key link to the Pacific Railroad was being completed and a bridge collapsed.... [tags: Chopin Awakening Essays]

- LeBlanc’s Gender Criticism of Chopin’s The Awakening Tomorrow marks thirty years since the Roe vs. Wade decision that gave women a reproductive choice in America. The occasion reminds me that women are continuously struggling to attain and maintain various levels of freedom. Elizabeth LeBlanc’s gender criticism of The Awakening---a novel published before women acquired suffrage---highlights one such freedom: the freedom to live on one’s own terms. The discussion delineates how Kate Chopin’s tale of one woman’s “choices, actions and attitudes may be construed as the attempts of a woman trapped in a sexually (in)different world to reconstitute herself as lesbian” (241).... [tags: Chopin Awakening]

- The Awakening as an Allegory of Existentialism Kate Chopin's The Awakening as the title suggests is just that‹the story of a young woman's awakening to life. Even though it is a work of fiction, the character of Edna undergoes such a radical change one cannot ignore the psychological depth of the work. The story could almost be seen as a case study. In order to analyze the work psychologically, it is important to decide which psychological framework to use. I chose the critic Cynthia Wolff who uses a Freudian framework for analysis. Wolff feels that Edna's problems are a result of oral conflicts, while I see the work as more of an allegory of existentialism, and Edna's proble... [tags: Chopin Awakening Essays]

- In their analytical papers on The Awakening by Kate Chopin, both Elaine Showalter and Elizabeth Le Blanc speak to the importance of homosocial relationship to Edna’s awakenings. They also share the viewpoint that Edna’s return to the sea in the final scene of the book represents Edna being one with her female lover and finding the fulfillment she has been seeking. We see evidence of this idea of the sea as a feminine from Showalter when she tells us that “As the female body is prone to wetness, blood, milk, tears and amniotic fluid, so in drowning the woman is immersed in feminine organic element.... [tags: Kate Chopin, homosocial relationships]

- Kate Chopin's work, The Awakening, and Henrik Ibsen's play, A Doll's House, were composed at a time when men dictated women in every part of life. They are both superior examples of literary works greatly ahead of their time. Each work exemplifies the strict social standards placed on women and how they destructively affected the women. They also demonstrate how the women were able to overcome over these social ethics and get towards a life of vaster fulfillment. The characters in The Awakening and A Doll's House were very similar.... [tags: Literary Analysis]

- American author Kate Chopin wrote two published novels and about a hundred short stories in the 1890s Most of her fiction is set in Louisiana and most of her best-known work focuses on the lives of sensitive, intelligent women. Her short stories were well received in her own time and were published by some of America’s most prestigious magazines—Vogue, the Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s Young People, and Century. Her early novel At Fault (1890) had not been much noticed by the public, but The Awakening (1899) was widely condemned.... [tags: Gender Lens Analysis]

- Strength in Struggle Many readers see the actions of Edna Pontellier in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening as those of a feminist martyr. Edna not only defies her husband and commits adultery, but chooses death over life in a society that will not grant her gender equality. Although this reading may fit, it is misguided in that it ignores a basic aspect of Chopin’s work, the force that causes Mrs. Mallard’s happiness in “The Story of an Hour” upon the news of her husbands death, “that blind persistence in which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature” (Chopin 353).... [tags: feminism, marriage, individuality]

- Madame Bovary as a Template for Kate Chopin’s The Awakening The story of Edna Pontellier, the heroine of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, echoes that of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. Both novels tell about young wives who recognize the hollowness of their marriages and look outside them for fulfillment. While the similarities are deep and numerous, Chopin’s characterization and plot diverge from those of Flaubert. Madame Bovary does contain a hint of advocacy for women, however Chopin’s version of the story reflects the author’s status as one of America’s first feminist authors.... [tags: Madame Bovary Essays]

- In Kate Chopin's The Awakening, the main character, Edna leaves her husband to find place in the world. Edna believes her new sexually independent power will make her master of her own life. But, as Martin points out, she has overestimated her strength and is still hampered by her "limited ability to direct her energy and to master her emotions" (22). Unfortunately, Edna has been educated too much in the traditions of society and not enough in reason and independent survival, admitting to Robert that "we women learn so little of life on the whole" (990).... [tags: Feminism Feminist Women Criticism]

- When Kate Chopin's "The Awakening" was published at the end of the 19th Century, many reviewers took issue with what they perceived to be the author's defiance of Victorian proprieties, but it is this very defiance with which has been responsible for the revival in the interest of the novel today. This factor is borne out by Chopin's own words throughout her Preface -- where she indicates that women were not recipients of equal treatment. (Chopin, Preface ) Edna takes her own life at the book's end, not because of remorse over having committed adultery but because she can no longer struggle against the social conventions which deny her fulfillment as a person and as a woman.... [tags: essays research papers]